Sickness

Everyone is sick. Everyone. I don't know how we all got sick, but somehow it is sweeping through the house. It started a few weeks ago when I got strep throat. Then the kids got sick. Colds, mainly. Then Nick got sick. He may have strep but since he refuses to go to the doctor we won't know. I've told him what can happen if strep goes unresolved but he doesn't care.

Then last night Ruby got sick. Now I'll be the first to admit, I complain about Ruby a lot. She pees in my house, she pukes randomly, there is hair everywhere, and she barks her head off. But I still love her and don't want anything bad to happen to her. She was sick. She literally wouldn't even lift her head off the floor.

I took her to a 24 hour vet hospital. She was super dehydrated. Her blood counts were way off. Her respirations and heart rate were elevated. So we did a bunch of stuff. X-rays, blood tests, fecal tests, urinalysis, etc. They wanted to admit her for 2 days to give her IV fluids. They gave me the estimate and I nearly had a heart attack. $1,750.00. Yeah, that's not happening.

We decided to treat her outpatient. They gave her 2 fluid boluses subcutaneously (she looked like a camel), and sent us home with a prescription for Flagyl. That along with the treatment she already had at the hospital was just $397.62. Much better. She got home and she drank a whole bowl of water. I'm keeping an eye on her, and we'll go to the regular vet this afternoon or tomorrow depending on when we have time and how she is drinking. She's doing better already. I also have a friend who's a vet so we're keeping in touch with her as well.

I have high hopes she'll recover just fine. This was scary though because we've never had a dog get sick like this before. Yosha tore his ACL and his hips went out. Brady had a stroke. But they were both 9+ years old. Ruby is 5 at the most.

Praying for speedy recoveries for everyone in this house! We need to get better ASAP!

Antibiotics...

It's never a dull moment at our house!! All three kids are taking amoxicillin now. We went to the pediatrician on Wednesday because Gretch has been pulling at her ears and Dom said his throat hurt. Dom had a throat culture done and tested positive for strept. Then Gretchen had her ears looked at and she has redness in one and lots of fluid in the other. So they both got started on antibiotics. Then they swabbed Annabelle just to be sure. She was negative. Then I got a lovely phone call yesterday saying that the swab for Annabelle that they sent off to the lab came back positive. So she got started on antibiotics too.

So two cases of strept and one double ear infection. Right on.

At least I can start them all on meds at the same time and be pretty confident that as soon as one is over it, they won't give it to another. That's what happened with the dreaded pink eye a few months back. And at Schnucks amoxicillin is free. So that's nice too...

Oh well. Here we go. Now let's just pray that none of them end up allergic to amoxicillin!

SO TIRED...

I recently went to the doctor because I was just (and still am) so tired all the time! I literally can't stay awake during the day. Even if I've gotten a full night's sleep. So my doctor ran a bunch of tests and found out that I'm extremely Vitamin D deficient. Extremely! So now I get to take a supplement for the rest of my life (just add it to my pill box of other drugs I have to take every day).

He doesn't think that regulating this will make me feel better and more awake, but I'm hoping it will! I'm tired of being tired all the time!!

We shall see...

Updates on Me

There isn't too much to tell on me. They still have no idea what's going on. I think the last thing I posted was my hospital stay at Christian Hospital. Well, I went back to the hospital the very next weekend with the exact same problem. Numbness and no feeling on the right side of my body. It started in my arm this time and went to my face next and ended in my leg. Nick dropped the kids off at my mother in law's at took me to Missouri Baptist Hospital and they admitted me and again found no answers. They did the same stroke protocol and found no problems. However, this time they also did a lumbar puncture test to check the pressure of my spinal fluid and to check my spinal fluid. Everything was normal except the protein level in my spinal fluid was elevated. After doing this check I felt amazing. No more headache, no more pain, I felt amazing. I was discharged the next day and told to follow up with the neurologist.

I felt pretty good for a bit, but then got another migraine a week later. My mom picked me up and brought me to my regular doctor. I was throwing up the whole way there (don't worry, I brought a bag - thank goodness my mom doesn't have a weak stomach) and I just felt awful. I told the doctor about the lumbar check and feeling better and he thought because of that, that I had a psuedo tumor. So he prescribed a drug to help with that. Acedozolomide or something like that. So I started taking that. I felt ok for a bit and then I started having tingling. Mainly in my hands and feet but it was all the time. So I started freaking out about that! Now I was worried about MS and all sorts of other things.

Luckily I had another appointment with my neurologist. I went to see him and told him about my tingling. He was worried until I told him about the new medicine. That's apparently a side effect of that drug. He checked my eyes and told me I didn't have a psuedo tumor and switched me to a new med, but warned me this also has a side effect of tingling. So now I'm on a migraine prevention med twice a day. He also set me up to do another lumbar check on Dec. 26th to re-check the protein levels.

My dad picked me up at 6 am on the 26th to bring me to MoBap to do the lumbar puncture. I got checked in and set up and everything was ready. My dad went back to work with me promising to call when I was ready to go home. My appointment was for 7:30 and I got back into the x-ray room at 8 am I think, so not too bad. They did the lumbar puncture and everything went well. Not too too painful and I was back in recovery.

I got to order breakfast but had to stay on my back for about an hour and a half. I thought this was weird because when I did the first one I had to stay on my back for 4-6 hours and my paper for my instructions before I went in for this procedure said I'd be in the hospital for 6-8 hours, so an hour and a half was not a long time. Especially with the risk of a spinal headache for getting up too early, but they are the docs right??

Around 10:30 I was completely discharged with the instructions to stay on my back all day and night and drink plenty of fluids. My dad picked me up and I went back to his house and laid in bed all afternoon. Nick picked me up and brought me home where I stayed on the couch all evening until I went up to bed. The next morning I got up for work and it went well, but by the end of the shift, my head started to hurt. Like I was getting a migraine. I was nervous, but went home, took some meds and tried to relax. 

It ended up being the worst migraine I ever had. I made it to work...for an hour or so. I made it home from work and my dad had to meet me there to take me back to MoBap for a blood patch. I had studied blood patches in school but wasn't entirely sure what they were and didn't really know if they would work. What a blood patch is: They basically are giving you an epidural. An anesthesiologist comes in and sticks a needle in your back and puts a tiny catheter in the epidural space in your spine. Then instead of amazing drugs going into your spine to make you feel numb, they put in your own blood. So I had to sit up (which caused my head to throb so bad I just wanted them to kill me, and I wish I was kidding but sadly I'm not), sit extremely still while they got the catheter in the right spot, then wait with the catheter/needle in my back and hold my arm still while they drew out 20 mL of my blood from my arm and then transferred that into my spine...

Luckily it only lasted about 5 minutes for the whole thing. Then I laid back down because I felt dizzy and nauseous. She wanted me to sit up and tell her if I felt better because apparently you are supposed to feel better immediately. I didn't feel better immediately and I couldn't sit up right away. So she left. They gave me more drugs and I slept for a bit. When I was able to get up I still had a pounding headache. Not a migraine, but a pounding headache. I took this as a good sign. They gave me a prescription for a pain med which I was excited about until I got it filled and it was actually Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen which makes me sick...It took 3 days but that migraine is now finally all the way gone. I'm taking my other meds and I'm hoping it's GONE gone.

I'm hoping also that these migraines will STAY away!! Like Nick said: I have school and work and I can't afford to miss anything! I need to be healthy!

Anyway, those are the updates on me. :)

My Hospital Stay

What a wild ride this past week has been. Not even a week! This may be a long post.

It started a few weeks ago actually when I started getting these headaches and dizziness that would go away. I started getting these headaches on the 7th of November. I didn't think too much of them, but they were BAD headaches. I took advil but they wouldn't really fully go away.

The day it all got very very bad was on Friday, the 16th. Nick needed to go up to his job site because he needed a permit number. Well, he never got the chance. After getting both kids (I already had Gretchen at home) and driving through downtown, I got a weird sensation. I had just turned around to tell Dominick something (Nick was driving) when I got a heavy feeling in my legs arms. I turned back around really quick and it almost felt as if it went away. Nick asked when was wrong and when I told him, he told me I had too much stuff in my lap and I needed to breathe.

He took a bunch of stuff out of my lap and when he did, I realized I could barely move my right leg. My left leg was fine though.

I was thinking maybe it fell asleep, but it wasn't a tingling feeling, it was HEAVY. Almost as if a lead weight was attached to my leg. Then I could feel it spread. The heavy feeling went up my right side and I couldn't move my arm. Again, only my right arm and not my left. At this point I started to freak out. We were stuck in traffic and I couldn't move any part of my right side. I kept smiling at myself in the mirror an both sides were smiling so I wasn't completely freaking out, but I was scared.

Then was the scariest thing to happen yet. I felt it go up to my face. When I felt it in my face, it was tingles and it wasn't just my face, my whole right side started tingling. I opened the mirror and smiled in the mirror and my worst fear was confirmed. I was only smiling with my left side of my face.

About the same time that happened, I lost my speech. I couldn't make out any words. They were just noises. I knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn't make the words come out.

We had already been headed up north, so Nick brought me to Christian Northeast. We had all three kids with us so Nick pulled up to the ER and helped me out. He locked the kids in the car until he could get me in. I had told him I could walk but I was way wrong. He practically carried me in and a security guard brought me a wheelchair. Nick went back out to the car and brought the kids in and waited for my parents to get there.

They kept asking me questions and I knew the answers but I couldn't say them. I'm sure it was frustrating for a lot of people.

I just got home last night. I had a million tests done. 2 CT scans (one with contrast and one without), MRI, MRA, TEE, 2 D Echo, too many vials of blood to even count. At least 20. And by the time this is all said and done, they aren't 100% sure what happened to me. They are "suspecting" that I had a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA - or mini stroke) but they aren't positive. I had something happen that has affected my brain though. Even typing I know it's different than it used to be. But it's ok, it's not starting from scratch. It's like I just forgot where some of the letters are located on the keyboard. I'll be back to a fast typist again soon, I'm sure.

I'm off of birth control and back onto a blood thinner (something I was told would be fine because my disorder isn't a big deal but clearly it is more of a big deal than any of us realized). I'm still trying to shake this headache and somehow I caught a virus in the hospital and have been throwing up a lot lately, but I think that's on the way out. I've been drinking a lot of alka-seltzer and eating basically popsicles and crackers.

I have an appointment with a stroke neurologist on Tuesday. Hopefully they can figure some stuff out, because I have to go to work 1 week from today!

I'm very thankful to the many people who came up or called or texted while I was in the hospital. I know on Sunday and Monday I was in NO mood for company so I'm sorry I didn't talk to any of you. But the balloons, flowers, everything was beautiful and it means a lot to me.

I'm so happy to be home. Even though I still feel weak and kind of sick, I'd much rather be here than in the hospital. I'm so thankful to get to see my kids! I missed them being away from all 3 for 4 whole days. And I missed my husband.

Ok, that's enough. Sorry if I just bored you to tears! I'm actually feeling so much better that Gretchen and I are headed to JCPenneys to buy our Thanksgiving outfits! Wish me luck!

Comes and Goes

So my headaches and pains and overall discomforts are just coming and going. Sometimes I feel like a million bucks. Other times I just want to lay in bed all day long and cry. Right now I'm having a good morning. Headache is almost completely gone and I feel decent. But I'm fearing that my pounding headache and stomach pains aren't far behind. I just need this baby to come already!!

On Saturday I was looking up every home remedy to go into labor. EVERY home remedy. I'll mention the only one I actually tried was eating spicy foods and all that did was wake me up at 2 am with bad heartburn...

But by Sunday day I felt great. I was thinking that I can do this for a few more weeks! Then Sunday night the migraine set back in and I wanted to throw up everywhere. Now Monday morning, I feel pretty good again. I'm fearing what tonight may bring though.

Only a few more weeks. I can do it, but man I'm ready to meet this baby already!! Maybe not ready like at the house (no baby room, no crib set up, no clothes ready, etc) but physically: my body is READY!

Here's to hoping for a baby sooner rather than later!

Migraine and Contractions

I had my first ever migraine last night...it was awful. I couldn't move. I couldn't have light on around me. I couldn't have noises around me. I wanted to throw up. It was just plain awful. I seriously don't know how people function like that if they have to go to work or anything. I just had to pick up my kids from my mother in law's and bring them to school and just doing that I thought I was going to explode.

I'm going to the store in a bit to get some things for home and for Dom's little trip, then I'm picking him up and bringing him to my mom and dad's work. Dom is a lucky lucky boy this weekend and gets to go with his Grandma and Grandpa to visit Aunt Angie, Uncle Andrew, Celia and Addie in Springfield! He is so excited.

After I drop him off, I'm headed to the doctor for an ultrasound to check growth and then my NST. And then I'll probably come home and climb into bed. I still feel pretty awful. I don't have a migraine anymore but I sure have a headache. It's just plain awful.

Last night I was also having contractions a lot. I literally was contracting every 3 minutes from 7:15 - 9:00 when I paged the on-call doc. Then when he called back at 9:20, they stopped. No more contractions at all. None. So I went to bed. Woke up at 10:00 pm with a contraction and then they came every 5 minutes until about 1:30 am. And then they stopped. And that's when the migraine kicked in. It was a long, bad, painful night.

I know I'm only 36 weeks 1 day but I'm done. This pain and all these contractions...I just can't handle it anymore. I'm done.

Only a few more weeks to go at the most!

Bring it on baby! Let's do this!

CROUP

Annabelle has croup. A bad case too.

She's struggling to breathe just sitting in her high chair or sitting on my lap. The doc said to start her on steroids asap. I'm waiting for Walgreens to tell me they are ready.

My poor baby. I hate that she's sick. She's my baby!! And I hate when little ones get sick and just don't understand. I can't make her better. I can only wait it out with her and hope that she gets better soon.

She also has a yeast infection. I'm glad we diagnosed that because now we can get the good stuff to make that go away. Nick called me at work last Thursday (when I worked till midnight) and said when he put her to bed she had horrible diaper rash. He's been loading her up with desitin. When I saw her Friday morning I thought it was yeast. So we debated. Desitin or anti-fungal cream. We kind of went back and forth and nothing got better.

Now it's confirmed yeast and we have special cream. Hopefully that goes away quickly too.

Poor girl. When it rains, it pours. Hopefully she'll be on the mend soon and back to her perky self asap!

Annabelle's Health

So poor baby girl Annabelle has been sick since she's been born basically. She's lived with the humidifier on everyday of her life. She seems to always have ear problems and congestion problems. We've seen allergists and seen the doctor more than I honestly want to (even though we love our pediatrician!).

Today was Annabelle's 1 month follow up from her last appointment (which was also a one month follow up) from a double ear infection. So after two double ear infections and two rounds of antibiotics we were hoping for good news.

Not so much.

Annabelle has yet another double ear infection. As well as throat problems now. Yay...

So we are on our last try for antibiotics. If those don't work, we are off to an ENT doc and most likely getting tubes in her little ears.

Stats update: at her appointment today she was 23 lbs 2 oz.

My poor baby! I feel so bad for her! I'll be happy when this is all over. If she needs tubes, that's fine. Let's do it! Anything to make her better. I just hate her being so congested all the time. She always seems like she's struggling to breathe. But she's always happy through it all! Until this last infection she's been a happy baby despite being sick. But now she's getting a little upset.

Say some prayers that either this antibiotic or getting tubes does the trick. I just want my baby to feel better!!!

Oh and quick update on B-Belles. No walking yet. She's 14 months now and I just want her to walk! :) She's taken steps here and there and will cruise behind a walking toy all day long. But on her own, she'll take two or three steps and decide that crawling is way faster and just drop. Hopefully soon though!!

Are you serious?!?

What am I, 4???

Seriously. I woke up this morning with pink eye...wth?? (and that stands for what the heck, people. No more cursing with Mr. Repeater living in our house).

At least I think it's pink eye. It might not be. I woke up with my eyes completely crusted shut and my eyes hurt so bad. I called the doc and got an antibiotic eye drop called in and I already feel better. There's no more pink, but my eyes are still killing me.

I worked over night Tuesday night so I was wearing my contacts for like 36 hours straight. After I got off work and then got home from school, I just slept on the couch in my contacts for like 8 hours so it's very possible it's an infection from that, but to play it safe I'm taking the antibiotics and the kids didn't go to daycare. Unfortunately, I had a presentation in school today so I just didn't touch anything and I kept to myself during that 3 hour class. I sure hope no one from school gets it!

I stirred up a lot of people's morning routine in my family though and I feel really bad about that. My mom usually watches my sister's kids and Annabelle on Thursdays and they didn't want Cecilia and Addie to get pink eye, which I understand, but then that put me in a huge pickle with Nick already being gone, me having to go to school and no one to watch my kids at all. Luckily my cousin Michelle was able to watch my sister's kids and my mom came out to help with my kids while I was in school but I was afraid I'd miss my presentation and lose out on a big chunk of my grade.

But all's well that ends well I suppose. Hopefully I got a good grade on my presentation after all that!